The scope of the ISA104 committee, Device Integration, was modified last year to include adoption and support of the Field Device Integration (FDI) standard (IEC 62769). To help promote the benefits of FDI technology in the process industry, four members of the ISA104 committee worked together this year to write and present a paper on how FDI Meets Plant’s Device Integration Needs. Jonas Berge, Emerson, Singapore, wrote most of paper and developed the presentation for ISA Automation Week. Stephen Mitschke, Fieldbus Foundation, Ludwign Winkel, Siemens, and I reviewed and provided some input on the paper and presentation. Ludwig and Stephen presented the paper at ISA Automation Week on Nov 5th, 2013 in a session on Smart Device Integration. Below is a picture that shows Ludwig during the paper presentation.

The key points in the paper and presentation are summarized by the paper abstract, shown below:

The future is digital, and digital should be intuitive and easy to use. Some users of 4-20 mA/HART, FOUNDATION fieldbus, and PROFIBUS devices have to grapple with two sets of files to integrate their devices; EDD files and DTM software drivers to integrate devices into their systems. Field Device Integration (FDI) is a new device integration technology combining Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL), with elements of Field Device Tool version 2 (FDT2), providing a single device package that can be used on any system. The NAMUR chemical industry user organization has released seventeen new user requirements for FDI over and above the circa 35 device integration technology requirements in their NE105 recommendation. The FDI technology has been designed to meet these plant needs, which includes investment protection, robustness, easy system administration, easy to use devices, interoperability, and easy migration.

You can purchase a copy of this paper at the ISA web site. Also, you can see and listen to the presentation using the embedded link shown below.

The presentation is approximately 48 minutes in length. The start times for each segment of the presentation are shown below
• 0-7 Introduction
• 7-11 Enabling Technology
• 11-14 Investment Protection
• 14-16 Greater Robustness
• 16-22 Easy System Administration
• 22-36 Easy to Use Devices
• 36-40 Interoperability Registration
• 40-43 Easy Migration
• 43-48 Conclusions
You can skip to the portions of the presentation that are of interest using the controls provided in the embedded view show above. We hope you find this presentation of interest.